Vanunu Update
SOLITARY SURVIVOR
THE SUNDAY TIMES: WORLD FOCUS
SUNDAY, 19 APRIL 1998
In his first interview after 11 years' isolation for revealing Israel's nuclear arms, Mordechai Vanunu tells how he stayed sane. Andy Goldberg reports
When Mordechai Vanunu met a blonde called Cindy in Leicester Square, London, on an autumn day in 1986 and embarked on a journey that ended in nightmare, he was intense, idealistic, black-haired and still a young man. All that remains is his idealism. He is now gaunt and grey, a prematurely aged 43-year- old.
He has spent the intervening 11 1/2 years in almost total isolation in a jail cell - the longest known term of solitary confinement in modern times - but he is more determined than ever to speak out for his ideals.
Vanunu was released from solitary by the Israeli authorities last month and, on the eve of today's visit to Israel by Tony Blair, he has given his first interview through an intermediary since revealing in The Sunday Times in 1986 that Israel had the world's sixth largest atomic arsenal.
Still getting used to mingling with other people after so long - albeit with other prisoners, as he is still in Ashkelon jail in southern Israel - the former nuclear technician insisted he had no regrets. "I say clearly that I did what I did from a deep internal conviction and I would do it all again," he said. "I think I was brave. I was the only individual who ever stood up to the entire Israeli establishment to say what I believed. I acted out of concern for this society even though Israel likes to portray me as public enemy number one."
His ordeal started soon after the Moroccan-born philosophy student and nuclear technician revealed the full extent of the weapons programme Israel had developed at the secret Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev desert.
Motivated by fears of nuclear war in the Middle East, he provided The Sunday Times with detailed diagrams and photographs. The information allowed experts to calculate that Israel had up to 200 nuclear warheads.
Days before publication, a female Mossad agent posing as an American tourist chatted up Vanunu in central London and ultimately lured him to a safe house in Rome. Agents seized him and injected him with sedatives before bundling him back home on a disguised Israeli navy ship.
Jailed for 18 years, Vanunu was given a cell in the Tiger wing of Ashkelon jail. The 10ft by 6ft whitewashed room contained only a bed, table and chair, a hole in the floor for his toilet and shower drain, and a tiny window high in the wall. In the first months a fluorescent light was left on continuously.
Contact with other humans was minimal. For seven years he had a warden named Buchara. Then a guard called Chico took over. These were his only regular contacts and they were ordered never to chat with him. Vanunu was allowed a daily stroll in the exercise yard, but only after the surrounding areas had been cleared of other inmates.
During brief fortnightly visits, a thick metal grille and chest-high concrete barrier separated him from his family. The only physical contact he experienced for 11 years was their fingers through the steel gate - and the rough handling of his jailers.
"The most difficult thing was not being able to talk to anyone," he said. "I could talk only to the walls and I longed for human contact, to shake someone's hand.
"But the thing that most annoyed me was that I had positive intentions for what I did but the state turned me into a monster. I could not bear the thought that their reason for doing these things was simple revenge.
"I wanted to save the population of Israel from the disaster of a nuclear war and they turned me into a traitor and a spy. There was no proportion between my act and my punishment. Even if they gave me 18 years in jail, the isolation was not part of that sentence. It was totally arbitrary."
Vanunu believes his victory is that he remained sane in a system which seemed designed to drive him crazy.
"During that time I was really afraid for my sanity and what would happen to me," he said. "The warder would say to me, 'You know, the person who was in this cell before you committed suicide'. They were trying to send me a message. Such statements put thoughts into your mind. They were trying to make me do it. I was so scared that I almost lost my belief in everyone and everything.
"But I developed a way to deal with this nightmare. I waged a totally conscious war against the messages the prison was trying to get through to me. I brainwashed myself to create a system of checks and balances to counteract them. I checked myself continuously to make sure I wasn't going off the tracks."
The worse the suffering got, the more Vanunu immersed himself mentally in his fight for freedom and against nuclear weapons. "It was like an obsessive trance. I knew that if I stopped that would be the end of me. I could never allow myself to become apathetic," he said.
"I looked at things only with my rationale. I couldn't afford to allow any room for pain or emotions. It would have broken me like a twig. If I would have thought about all the things that I missed I would have collapsed."
He adhered to "an iron routine" every day. Waking around 6.30am, he would have breakfast and then read books for two hours. In the early years he threw himself into works of philosophy. Kant, Nietzche, Sartre and Camus were his favourites. More recently he has been reading historical tomes.
After his morning read he would receive his heavily censored letters, and spend two hours reading and replying to them. After that he would be allowed out into a small yard. Lunch would be followed by more reading and a nap.
For the rest of the afternoon he would listen to his transistor radio, often to the BBC, or to classical music. After he was allowed a Walkman his favourites were operas: Madame Butterfly, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville. Before going to bed he would again immerse himself in his books.
His release from solitary confinement was unexpected; but he could have been out far earlier had he agreed to bend his principles. He revealed that five years ago two agents of the Shin Bet security police entered his cell to offer him a deal: they would end his isolation if he agreed not to talk to anyone about nuclear weapons or the circumstances of his capture by Mossad agents.
"Get out of this cell," Vanunu told them. "I am not interested. Do what you want because I shall have no dealings with you. You put me in here and you can take me out. But I will not forgo my right to say that I was kidnapped and that you broke the law."
He said he had no other choice. "Everyone knows that I am in jail not because I raped, robbed or murdered. I sit here because of my ideals. Given my background and the things I knew it was inevitable that I did what I did. That's why I'm not willing to strike any deals with them and never have done. In the end they surrendered and let me out of solitary. I beat them."
He added: "Now I look at those years like a dream. They are behind me. Today I feel normal and natural."
His family see a gleam in his eyes that had all but died for 11 years, but the experience of relative freedom has clearly been overwhelming. "In the first days out it was difficult to speak to people and it takes time to get used to. The feeling of being in open spaces was incredible. I wandered around in a daze looking at the sky and the sun. I couldn't comprehend it."
After being denied elementary human contact for so long, shutting down his emotional system in an instinctive act of survival, he finds it hard to hug and touch even visitors like his brother Asher.
On Tuesday he completes two-thirds of his 18-year sentence and will appear before a parole board to request the customary remission for good behaviour. Although legal and political insiders doubt that he will win his freedom soon, Vanunu is optimistic.
His parole appearance, Blair's visit and the impending 50th anniversary of Israel's foundation are all boosting international pressure for his release. Lord Avebury and Jeremy Corbyn MP, of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, are going to Israel this week. So is Susannah York, the actress, who has long campaigned for Vanunu.
When and if he is freed, Vanunu seems intent on leaving Israel as soon as possible. "I want to go to the United States; I do not want to stay here," he said. "I want to work for peace organisations. I will continue the fight against nuclear weapons but without breaking the law.
"But the first thing I want to do is go to the beach and then to a good restaurant."
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd.
HaAretz / Friday, April 10, 1998
The loneliness of a top security prisoner
Opinions differ widely as to why Mordechai Vanunu was released last month from solitary confinement. But the question of whether his 11 years of solitude was anything other than simple revenge will not go away, Orit Shohat writes
Three months ago Mordechai Vanunu wrote from prison to some Israelis who have been active on his behalf for years. "The time has to come to write in Hebrew," he started off, after years of specifically choosing to write only in English, to intellectuals, scientists, members of parliament and anti-nuclear activists around the world. Vanunu has, during his confinement in an Israeli prison, become an international hero without achieving the same status here at home.This year, after he was one of the top three candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, concern over his fate grew even greater. Soon, President Ezer Weizman is expected to receive a petition with 21,000 signatures calling for Vanunu's pardon. Among the signatories are the mayor of Hiroshima, Bishop Desmond Tutu, physicists who helped develop the American atom bomb, British playwright Harold Pinter, conductor Sir Colin Davis, violinist Yehudi Menuhin, actors Tom Conti and Ed Asner and singer Phil Collins. Fifty Swedish parliamentarians and 21 members of the European Parliament also signed the petition. Recently, a group of Australian senators demanded his release and earlier, Pink Floyd dedicated a concert in London to Vanunu.
Many countries consider anti-nuclear activism to be part of the political agenda and Vanunu's actions are not perceived as treason, rather as publicity (bypassing the censor) meant to shock Israel and the world into awareness about unmonitored atomic bombs and the means of producing them. Even though Vanunu intended to draw Israelis' attention to what was going on in Dimona, he managed only to draw attention to the kidnapping plot carried out with the help of Mossad agent "Cindy". The anti-nuclear weapons campaign in Israel, which has been going on for more than 30 years, does not employ more than a handful of people.
In his letter of three months ago, Vanunu tells his Israeli supporters how disappointed he is with them. He does not write much about himself and his conditions, rather mostly about the anti-nuclear weapons campaign. "Since you've been living for years under the influence of strong, addictive drugs called 'security,' to this day no one with serious political clout has been found to work against the nuclear monster...What's happening to you? Who are you afraid of?...It seems that you're the ones who need support, not I, and I want to encourage and support you...I'll continue to speak out because the nuclear issue was and remains my main concern...I want to end Israel's nuclear adventure by destroying the Dimona nuclear reactor just as the Iraqi nuclear reactor was destroyed in 1981."
Vanunu's letter was written about two months before his removal from solitary confinement and it is irate, blunt and not entirely coherent. The few people who visited him in prison say that during 11 years of solitary confinement which ended on March 31, his mental condition has worsened considerably. According to them, it is possible that the authorities decided to end his isolation because it was the last chance to save him from insanity.
Given that the security reasons that led to his imprisonment in solitary confinement have not changed, today the question is being asked more forcefully why the State of Israel decided to punish Vanunu more severely by adding solitary confinement to the 18-year sentence issued by the court. Does the State have the legal and moral authority to knowingly cause any prisoner irreversible mental damage?
Attorney Avigdor Feldman, who has been handling Vanunu's case from the beginning, has no explanation for the changed policy. He surmises that Vanunu's removal from solitary confinement may have been due to the State's concern over the Supreme Court appeal on this matter and perhaps international pressure also had some effect. Some say the solitary confinement ended after Vanunu promised not to reveal names of fellow workers at the Dimona nuclear reactor. Attorney Feldman dismisses this theory because Vanunu always said that he had no intention of publicizing any names.
To the best of Feldman's knowledge, Vanunu promised nothing. His associates say that he never made any deals. He is unwilling to express remorse or to promise to keep quiet. The anti-nuclear weapons campaign continues to be more important to him than any improvement in his conditions, and he will also not accept a deal in which he is exchanged for a spy because he insists he is not a spy. The court, incidentally, accepted Vanunu's claim that he did what he did on behalf of the anti-nuclear weapons campaign and not for money.
In February 1997, the magazine Mitzad Sheni published an interview that Vanunu had given in the summer of 1985 shortly before he fled abroad with Israel's atomic secrets. The interview was part of research conducted by Prof. Amiel Alkalai of New York on Sephardi Jewish communities in Israel and their attitudes toward Arabs. Interviewer Ilana Sogbacher met Vanunu when he was studying for his master's degree in philosophy at Be'er Sheva University and heard about his immigration to Israel from Marrakech in 1963, his perception of his "Moroccan-ness" and the changes in his political views. Vanunu relates that until he came to Israel he saw himself as Moroccan, but on arrival, that changed. "There are some people who continue to love Moroccan songs and traditions, but that's not to my taste. I think it's more important now for us to speak Arabic to the Arabs here and to know their songs, than for us to artificially resuscitate Moroccan Arabic."
Until his university studies, Vanunu says he was a Likud supporter like most of his family. "My parents are extremists and religious; for them, everything the Likud says is from God. At the same time, they have nothing against Arabs. Because they are so religious, I became anti-religious and because I rebelled against God, I could shatter all my world views and completely rebuild myself," Vanunu says in that 1985 interview.
It is enlightening to read his words in retrospect knowing that a few months later, he would flee abroad with pictures of the Dimona reactor where he worked as a technician. "The Jews must stop feeling that everyone wants to eliminate them," Vanunu said then. "Anyone who feels constantly persecuted becomes very defensive and prepares for war, but people didn't come here to fight all the time and die, to suffer from an economic situation that is a direct result of the defense expenditures which are destructive for the state."
In that interview Vanunu specifically said: "I can tell you that I'm now trying to leave here, go abroad and maybe not return. I talk to people and I'm pessimistic. It's hard to live here when you feel that so few people think as you do. If I believed that there'd be peace, I'd stay, but if there's no peace, I have nothing to live for here.", Just as he left Judaism in 1985 when he was converted by a pacifist priest from Australia, several months ago he cut himself off from his biological parents when he agreed to the request of two American Christians to legally adopt him. After a U.S. court approved the adoption, the Ashkelon prison wardens agreed to the adoptive parents' request to meet with Vanunu for two hours. The visit ended abruptly when Vanunu started to discuss prohibited topics. He was forcibly removed from the room, but this incident did not affect the lifting of his solitary confinement shortly thereafter.
Apparently concern regarding the things that Vanunu can tell no longer exists. The question is, did such concern ever exist or was his solitary confinement nothing but an act of revenge?
Vanunu's family and other supporters say they have no complaints about the prison wardens. Ashkelon prisoner commander Yitzhak Gabbai's treatment has been especially humane. When Vanunu first emerged from solitary confinement, Gabbai walked with him among the prisoners and introduced him to them. Today he is allowed to see his brother once a week and they have installed a direct phone line to his lawyer's office. Visits by non-family members are still prohibited.
Only two MKs have been consistently working to end Vanunu's isolation. First Dedi Zucker (Meretz) worked alone and later Yossi Katz (Labor) joined him. Shulamit Aloni was also a vocal supporter of the cause. In Israel, there is no political benefit to be gained from such activity.Support for nuclear weapons is widespread on the Israeli left, even more so than on the right. The argument is that anyone willing to give up territories needs an appropriate defensive alternative. Shlomo Ben-Ami went as far as referring to Israeli nuclear policy as "brilliant." However, even ardent supporters of this policy could have demanded Vanunu's removal from solitary confinement or, at the very least, have looked into whether such treatment was based on real security considerations.
Vanunu's adoptive parents, Nick and Marie Olof, are veteran activists in the campaign against nuclear weapons in the U.S. and currently are leading a fight against a plant manufacturing mines in their Minnesota hometown. They argue that the 11 years of solitary confinement Vanunu served are a far more severe punishment than the 18-year term handed down by the court. If they succeed in obtaining his early release, they will try to get Vanunu into a St. Paul, Minnesota rehabilitation institute for victims of mental torture. There is no guarantee that Vanunu will cooperate with them.
© copyright 1998 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
The (London) Guardian Friday March 13, 1998
Hopes were rising last night that Israel could be preparing to release Mordechai Vanunu, the former technician who revealed the extent of Israel's nuclear programme, next month.
His lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, said Vanunu might be released when he completes two-thirds of his 18-year jail sentence next month.
Yesterday Vanunu mingled with fellow prisoners for the first time in 12 years after Israel's justice ministry ended his solitary confinement, ruling that he was in danger of losing his mind.
Yossi Katz, the chairman of the Knesset public audit committee with responsibility for some intelligence issues, said Vanunu's personal situation and Israel's relations with the international community had a great influence on the justice ministry's decision.
Mr Katz said: "It is a question of the human rights of Vanunu versus national security, and I think the time now is to give priority to Mr Vanunu's rights."
A justice ministry statement yesterday said his isolation in Ashkelon prison would end, after consultations with psychiatrists who argued that "extended isolation would damage his mental state". It said security officials had also been consulted.
A petition had been due to go before the supreme court this week calling for the end of Vanunu's solitary confinement on the grounds that it constituted a cruel and unusual punishment.
Mr Katz said he had no idea what the response of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, would be to his request for Vanunu's release.
During a visit to Oslo last week, Mr Netanyahu turned down a similar request from the Norwegian prime minister, arguing that it was an "internal Israeli matter". However, Mr Katz said "top security officials" shared his belief that Vanunu did not pose a threat to national security.
The justice ministry said Vanunu had been informed yesterday of the decision to end his isolation but had refused transfer to another section where inmates carried out manual work.
"He was told he would continue to sleep in his own cell, but would be allowed to meet other prisoners outside his block during the day, and if he so wishes, to invite inmates into his cell," the ministry said.
Mr Feldman said: "As of today, he is walking about and mingling with other prisoners. When he was told, he was very happy about it. He said this proves the whole security argument for his isolation was not genuine. It was a punishment."
Mr Feldman said his immediate aim was to push for a 48-hour "vacation" from the prison, which most inmates are awarded after serving a quarter of their term. Vanunu has served two-thirds of his term for "assisting the enemy in time of war by disclosing secret information", but the justice ministry said he would not be granted a "vacation".
The former nuclear technician approached the Sunday Times in 1986, after he underwent a spiritual crisis and a conversion to Christianity, and told the newspaper about his work in the Dimona nuclear reactor, where he said Israel was stockpiling nuclear weapons.
He was lured away from a London hotel by a Mossad woman agent, codenamed Cindy, who befriended him on the street and lured him to Rome where he was seized by Mossad and transported under sedation to Israel on an El-Al airliner.
After 12 years, during which he was allowed only occasional outside visits, Vanunu's friends and his brother, Asher, said his mental state had deteriorated significantly and he was showing signs of paranoia. Those claims had until yesterday been shrugged off by government ministers.
Mr Feldman verified that yesterday's decision was linked to psychiatric assessments.
_____________________________________________________
HaAretz, Friday, March 13, 1998
Vanunu will be allowed a daily walk and conversation
Nuclear spy's lawyer: He may be released next month
By Moshe Reinfeld, Ha'aretz Supreme Court Corespondent
Nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu will remain in the same cell in the Shikma prison in Ashkelon, despite the state's declared readiness to release him from the solitary confinement he has been held in for the past 12 years. In a meeting yesterday with the prison commander, Vanunu refused to be transferred to the working wing of the prison where he would have been allowed contact with other prisoners. But he will be allowed a daily walk outside the confines of the prison building, during which he will be able to meet and converse with other inmates. If he wishes, he will also be allowed to share his cell with other prisoners.
Vanunu's lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, said yesterday there was a possibility that Vanunu would be released altogether once he has completed serving two-thirds of his 18-year sentence next month.
Vanunu, 43, who was convicted of treason for giving information about Israel's nuclear program to London's Sunday Times newspaper, has been held in isolation since 1986. Israel's security services had argued that Vanunu, must be kept isolated to prevent him passing on information about Israel's nuclear program.
But now the attorney general and Justice Ministry officials decided to release Vanunu from isolation because they felt the security argument would not stand up before the Supreme Court, to which Vanunu had appealed after the Be'er Sheva District Court rejected a petition against his continued solitary confinement.
Justice Ministry Director General Nili Arad yesterday informed the Supreme Court of the new arrangements, and said there was no longer any point in continuing the appeal proceedings. Feldman said the government apparently changed its position, in part, because of international pressure. Several human rights groups and foreign leaders, including the prime minister of Norway, have taken up Vanunu's case.
In April, Vanunu will have served two-thirds of his sentence, and is up for early release. Feldman said he has sensed misgivings among government officials about the harsh way in which his client has been treated. "I wouldn't say it's a totally fantastic possibility that he would be released," Feldman said.
Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona, gave photographs from inside the plant to the Sunday Times. Based on the information, nuclear experts said that Israel has the world's sixth-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.
March 13 1998
MIDDLE EAST
Mordechai Vanunu: "a tormented man"
FROM CHRISTOPHER WALKER
IN JERUSALEM
THE former nuclear technician who revealed Israel's nuclear secrets to The Sunday Times has been released from the solitary confinement in which he has been held for nearly 12 years, his lawyer said yesterday.
According to British-based campaigners led by the actress Susannah York, Mordechai Vanunu is the longest-serving prisoner in solitary confinement in the world. The isolation in his cramped cell in Ashkelon jail is said to have had a serious effect on his mental condition.
His lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, said Vanunu had been allowed to meet other prisoners. Mr Feldman did not believe that Vanunu, 43, was in danger of being attacked.
Vanunu, a Moroccan-born Jew now converted to Christianity, had petitioned the Supreme Court requesting that he be granted the same rights as other prisoners. He protested that he had no more nuclear secrets to reveal, and therefore could be allowed contact with other prisoners.
The Israeli was lured from London to Rome by a female Mossad agent and then kidnapped in October 1986. He was convicted of treason in an Israeli court and jailed for 18 years.
He has consistently denied being a spy or accepting any money from The Sunday Times, claiming instead to be a "whistle-blower" bent on humanitarian concerns in exposing to the world that Israel had a formidable nuclear arsenal, making it the sixth largest nuclear power.
Mr Feldman said that part of the reason for the change of heart by the Israeli authorities was international pressure. Several human rights groups and personalities in the worlds of the arts and sciences have taken up Vanunu's cause, as well as foreign leaders including Magne Bondevik, the Prime Minister of Norway.
Dedi Zucker, a left-wing member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is one of a small band of much-maligned Israeli campaigners for Vanunu. He said after a recent visit to the jail: "He no longer poses a security threat.
"If the purpose of the extended isolation was to drive him out of his mind, then they have succeeded. That is why they do not care if he is let out of isolation. I found a tormented man with obvious anomalies. I prefer not to go into details."
Mr Feldman said yesterday that he has recently sensed misgivings among government officials about the harsh way in which his client had been treated. "I would not say it is a totally fantastic possibility that he would be released after he has completed serving two thirds of his sentence next month," he said.
But Israeli politicians do not share Mr Feldman's cautious optimism on this point.
Voices for Vanunu - Papers From the International Conference, Tel Aviv, October 1997. An International Symposium of Experts and Whistleblowers, Chaired by Joseph Rotblat is now avaliable from the Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu, London - vanunu@innocent.com
December 14 1997 London Sunday Times
Vanunu clashes with minister on solitary status
by Andy Goldberg/Tel Aviv
MORDECHAI Vanunu, who was jailed for exposing Israel's secret nuclear weapons programme in The Sunday Times 11 years ago, clashed with the country's minister of public security after demanding to be transferred from solitary confinement to a wing for Palestinian prisoners last week.
They met on Thursday when Avigdor Kahalani visited the top-security Ashkelon jail in southern Israel. Prison sources said the encounter turned ugly as soon as the minister entered Vanunu's cramped cell.
One officer said Kahalani was angered by the large cross on the cell wall - testament to Vanunu's conversion to Christianity.
"Why am I in solitary confinement?" demanded Vanunu, whose appeals for improved conditions have always been rejected. Kahalani, a former tank commander who halted a Syrian advance on the Golan Heights in the 1973 Middle East war, called Vanunu "a traitor", the sources said.
Kahalani attempted to justify Vanunu's isolation in a windowless cell by arguing he was a security threat. "You revealed state secrets and now you are asking me to be transferred to a cell with Palestinian prisoners," he said.
"I did not act against the state," prison sources quoted Vanunu as replying. "I saved the state because it will no longer use nuclear weapons."
"No," replied Kahalani, "You still pose a danger to the state and that's why you will stay right here."
Independent analysts dispute the claim that Vanunu poses a danger. They say the former nuclear technician divulged all his knowledge in 1986, when, on the basis of his information, experts estimated that Israel had the world's sixth largest stockpile of nuclear arms, with 100-200 weapons. Vanunu left the top-secret Dimona nuclear plant after taking photographs and drawing its interior, and went to Australia, where he made contact with Sunday Times reporters. He said he had a duty to warn the world about Israel's nuclear weapons.
An undercover Israeli agent befriended him in London and lured him into a trap in Rome, where he was captured, and taken by boat to Israel. There he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Vanunu and his supporters believe he has been isolated to drive him insane so that when he leaves jail in 2004, he will be discredited.
Friends and family say that the strain of so many years in prison is beginning to tell on Vanunu, who has become paranoid and believes he is close to death. Kahalani remained unconcerned as he joked with reporters. "Vanunu is getting five-star treatment," he laughed, "and looks a picture of health."
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